Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Straiton

A narrow road runs south from this lovely village called the Nick o’ the Balloch. It doesn’t go through the Carrick of gentle fields or verdant valleys, but over the wild hills and moorland that make the edges of this area so beautiful, and finally drops down into Glentrool.

Straiton itself sits beside the water of Girvan, and has picturesque little cottages facing each other across a main street, some with roses growing round the door. It was a planned village, laid out in 1760 by the Earl of Cassillis on the site of a small hamlet. The local pub, The Black Bull, dates from 1766, while parts of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church date back to 1510.

Many of the scenes in the film The Match (also called The Big Game) were shot in Straiton, which became the fictional Highland village Inverdoune.

Close to the village is Blairquhan (pronounced “Blair-whan”), a Tudor-Gothic mansion built between 1821 and 1824 to the designs of the famous Scottish architect William Burn. It stands on the site of an earlier tower house dating to 1346 that was once a McWhirter stronghold before passing to the Kennedys. It is now owned by the Hunter Blair family, and is open to the public in summer. It has a fine collection of paintings by the Scottish Colourists. On a hill above the village stands the Hunter Blair Monument, built in 1856 to commemorate James Hunter Blair, killed at the Battle of Inkerman.